


beauty and balance

by pprfaith



Series: Wishlist 2014 [3]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Originals (TV)
Genre: Community: wishlist_fic, F/M, Post-Chosen, Prompt Fic, Season/Series 01, Weird, and there are basically no warnings other than that, this is so weird
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-14
Updated: 2014-12-14
Packaged: 2018-03-01 11:02:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2770634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pprfaith/pseuds/pprfaith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Buffy goes on a working vacation and the author pulls out her hair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	beauty and balance

**Author's Note:**

> Xgirl2222 asked for BtvS/Originals – Buffy/Elijah – Buffy goes to NOLA to find out why slayers seem to weaken as soon as they set foot in the city, but instead of feeling off, Buffy feels stronger and then there’s Elijah, who flirts and also spies on her and then there is love. Hearts and puppies. And prophesies. – I paraphrased. Good god, did I paraphrase. 
> 
> \- I love your prompts, you know I do, they make me write awesome stuff, but this one, I have to admit, killed me. In six years of Wishlist-ing, I have never encountered a prompt that left me this confused. So I worked off the plot points and tried to do my best, but I'm afraid it's not very good because it's a lot of plot points with nothing to really connect them and suspension of disbelief will only carry you so far. 
> 
> Sorry. I wish I could have made you a better story.

+

“Look, Buffy, we’re pretty sure whatever is leeching the slayers’ powers started in New Orleans, but it’s spreading. I know you’re not…. I know, okay, but you’re the oldest and strongest and we’re pretty sure you would be affected slower than the others. That you’d have time to actually gather some intel before it gets too much. Please?”

Buffy hates that Willow is begging her, like her helping isn’t something the other woman can depend on, but then, ever since Sunnydale, they haven’t been… what they were. They’re not the teenagers they were and Buffy has been more and more hands-off when it comes to the New Council in the past few years. It’s not that she has a problem with how things are run, it’s just that she’s so damn tired of it all. 

So when Willow called, Buffy considered, for just a second, not answering. 

She regrets that she did, now, if only a little. “And what’s to say I won’t keel over faster than anyone else instead?”

Willow makes a little sound of annoyance. “Because we’ve sent in seven other girls already. We know that much. And we know that we need more information. Buffy, the girls aren’t getting their powers back. It’s like they’ve just been syphoned off. Permanently.”

For a split second, Buffy sees an option rising in front of her eyes. Go to New Orleans. Let it suck her dry. Lead a normal, monster free life.

Right up until some demon with a grudge comes for her and she dies because she’s human. 

She sighs again. “Alright, alright. I’ll get a flight down there, check it out. Expect an update in a few days, okay?”

“The Council jet-” 

She cuts her old friend off. “I’m in Houston,” she announces. There was a nest of vampires and she felt like a little violence after Dawn cancelled their plans to meet in LA and drive out to the sinkhole on their mom’s birthday. Exams. Buffy understands. “It’s not worth sending the jet.”

Then she hangs up, because she’s covered in dust and blood and this is the portion of the conversation where Willow tentatively starts trying to make small talk and Buffy awkwardly tries to find new words to express, “I’m a slayer and I don’t remember being a person, but then you went and magicked my calling away, so now I run around the globe, try and fail to make connections, and kill a lot of monsters.”

It’s better for both of them if they just don’t. 

+

According to the reports Willow sent Buffy, the minis all started showing slight symptoms – headaches, dizziness – within minutes of crossing the city limits. There are theories about how the ancestral magic New Orleans is so famous for has something to do with it. 

The ancestors, the spirits, are close to the living here, Buffy reads. It sounds like something from a tourist guide. Perhaps someone is using the ancestors to weaken the slayers. What for, no-one knows. 

Blah, blah. Buffy makes it across city lines and all the way into the French Quarter without so much as a sneeze. 

In fact, she feels a little giddy, almost like one of the happy-go-lucky tourists toddling around everywhere. 

She feels _good_. Even after wandering for hours, checking out all kinds of supposed supernatural hotspots and magic shops and what-have-you, she still feels fine. There’s something going on in this city, she can tell, some kind of turf war, from the looks of it. There are all kinds of spells hidden all over, in drainage pipes and window nooks, drawn on walls and tied onto lampposts, disguised as graffiti or art. There’s also blood in too many corners for human crime to explain it and Buffy feels eyes on her, feels the zing of supernatural energy all over. 

But she’s here because slayers lose their powers in this town and right now, the opposite seems to be happening to the oldest slayer. 

Which is weird and also not what anyone expected. So much for the pipe dream of turning human again. 

Oh, well. 

There’s a bar across the street that looks appropriately New Orleans-ish, so she shrugs and heads for it. It feels like a good idea. Buffy hasn’t had that feeling in _years_ , so she obeys it. Sure, she probably shouldn’t, because that way, bad things happen, but she’s giddy-happy. So. 

Bar. 

It’s gloomy, dark wood all the way, and kind of empty, owing to the fact that it’s just after three on a Tuesday afternoon, but the bartender smiles and delivers her coke without the sneer that sometimes accompanies a non-alcoholic drink in a bar. There’s no kitchen attached to the place, but they have some snacks. Buffy orders a sandwich and watches the few people inside. 

There’s the typical tourist couple, flirting hard enough to tinge the air around them pink, a family of five, with harassed looking parents and kids that won’t sit still for their fries, a few business men, celebrating a deal. 

The only one remotely interesting in the place is the lone man sitting in a booth at the very back. He came in about ten minutes after her, got a drink, and went straight to that booth. Line of sight on everything in the bar. His suit is bespoke, his dark hair perfectly coiffed and his shoes are Italian leather. He is nursing that single drink, watching everyone with the air of a man brooding like hell, and generally looks like something out of a mob movie. 

Also, hot. 

When he looks her way, Buffy raises her glass in a silent toast, smiles when he answers in kind after a moment’s hesitation. 

O-kay. Maybe the giddiness is something to worry about after all. Buffy generally does not long-distance flirt with perfect strangers while on a hunt. Even if the hunt turns out to be a bust because none of what is supposed to happen is actually happening.

Which is weird in itself. 

The bartender delivers her sandwich just then and one of the kids spills his juice all over the place and Buffy forgets about Broody for a bit and simply… enjoys. She eats her food, watches the people around her, and does not assess them for their potential of trying to kill her.

It’s nice. 

She finishes her drink halfway through her food and is about to flag down someone to get a refill, when a glass dripping with condensation is set in front of her, followed by a smooth, British voice, asking, “May I sit?”

It’s Broody, the mobster, his own drink in hand, smiling down at her in a surprisingly sweet way. 

Her knee jerk reaction is to lure him out back and punch him in the face to see if he’s human. But not today. Today, Buffy shrugs and points to the empty bench across the booth. “Well, you bought me a drink. It would be rude to send you packing, right?”

His smile grows wider. 

“I’m Elijah,” he introduces himself as he sits, holding out a hand for her to shake. She puts down her knife to take it, finds him whispering a kiss across her knuckles. Ho boy, smooth move. 

“Buffy,” she answers, belatedly as he lets go of her hand. It tingles. 

“Buffy,” he sounds delighted. “A pleasure to meet you. What brings you to New Orleans?”

Having learned long ago that lies don’t ever really work out, she shrugs and settles for a portion of the truth. “I’m doing a favor for a friend.”

He leans forward, engaged. “Really? Well, that makes you a good friend, doesn’t it?”

+

Five hours later, Buffy is standing in a hastily acquired hotel room, staring at her own reflection in the mirror. 

The giddiness that buoyed her through the afternoon and an hour-long conversation with Elijah, has settled. Her body has gotten used to whatever is causing her to go a bit loopy and now that sanity has returned, there are a few things that seem worrying. 

One, the chances of a turf war between supes happening parallel but not connected to the mysterious slayer-power-drain? Not really as big as giddy Buffy thought. She’s sure that she was being watched for most of the day and it doesn’t sit well with her. 

Two, agreeing to go on a date with a man she only just met, no matter how nice he seems? Bad idea. Really bad idea. What was giddy! Buffy thinking?

Sure, it was nice, talking to someone. Anyone. Elijah. He’s in town to look after his trouble-prone younger brother, the same way Buffy spent so long trying to look after Dawn, and he seemed as eager to talk about normal things as Buffy does. He likes black and white movies and has travelled even more than she has since Sunnydale. They exchanged raunchy Italian pick-up lines and laughed about Londoners. 

It was so, so easy. 

Too easy. 

Too easy, for a man who entered the bar a few minutes after her and focused on her almost immediately. Too easy for Buffy’s life, for what she’s here for, for… everything. 

It’s easy, so something must be wrong with it. 

Experience says so. 

But even now that her body has dealt with whatever made her so weirdly _happy_ , Buffy still wants to go to dinner with him. She wants to let him show her his favorite restaurant and go for a walk with him afterward, laugh about their siblings’ antics. 

She _wants_. 

On her bed, her phone lies. Across the globe, Willow waits for an update. Next to the phone lies the dress Buffy bought, a green, short number with a circle skirt. Perfect for dancing. 

She sits down next to both, grabs the phone. Stares. Before Houston, she did Xander a favor in Jo’burg. Before that is was Spain, Italy, China, Canada, Brazil. Before that something else and something else. 

_So far, it’s not affecting me. Potential turf war going on. More tomorrow._

She hits send, grabs the dress and goes into the bathroom. 

+

“You’re beautiful.”

He doesn’t make a production out of it, doesn’t overdo it, just takes a long look at her and tells her she’s beautiful. 

And Buffy knows it’s an awful idea, but she takes his hand and answers, “You’re not bad yourself, Mr. Designer is for Peasants.”

His laugh is genuine and startled, as if he didn’t expect himself to laugh at all. 

They talk until well after midnight, and when he asks how long she’ll be in town, she thinks of potential wars and her empty apartment in Cleveland and says, “A while, probably. My friend’s favor grew fangs.”

She chuckles at her own, lame joke, and he looks startled for a moment, before nodding. 

“Then allow me to repeat tonight. Are you free tomorrow?”

+

The giddiness may have faded, but the energy rush she has been having all day has not, and so she finds herself still on the streets at three am, looking for something to work out on. Demons are few and far in between in this city, but she finds one trying to corner a prostitute in an alley and interferes, sending the woman running.

Once they’re unseen, she grins and settles in for a lazy fight. A little cat and mouse never harmed anyone, except the mouse. 

With her right, she draws back and throws the first punch at the growling, snarling demon, spinning with it and readying for a kick. 

Except the demon goes down. And stays down. 

After a few seconds, she crouches next to it, searching for a life sign. There is nothing. It’s dead. She killed it, broke its neck, with a single punch. 

She looks down at her fist, then at the body. 

Well, shit. 

+

Elijah takes her out to dinner, the theater, art shows, late night walks and once, just for shits and giggles, a cemetery tour, where he spends the entire three hours grimacing and muttering under his breath about historical inaccuracies. 

It’s hilarious and wonderful and he kisses her at the end of it, tasting of the Cajun food they had for lunch.

+

It’s vampires versus witches in the Quarter, and half the city suffers from it. 

It’s vampires versus vampires, and the other half of the city suffers for that. 

She listens and watches and draws up convoluted messes of allegiances on the back of napkins while updating Willow with the bare bones. 

_Still not feeling the effects. Investigating war._ She doesn’t mention her own state, her increased strength, speed, accuracy. She’s not sure why. 

There is a self-proclaimed king among vampires who controls the witches, who rebel and fight and die. There is the king’s maker, come back from exile to take back his kingdom. Only the maker is also part werewolf – which, what? – and somewhere outside the city, decimated packs wait for their chance to swoop in, like carrion eaters after a battle. 

It sounds like something out of a fantasy novel and Buffy would pick a side, but she has no idea which. On the one hand, vampires bad, witches good. On the other hand, there are whispers of the witches trying to use a pregnant woman, of sacrificing girls for more power. 

She decides it’s none of her business and lets Elijah take her on a day trip to the beach.

+

At night, when she can exhaust herself enough to sleep, Buffy dreams of the desert with a rolling red sky above, of a forest with a thousand wolf eyes in it and goblets full of red, spilling on dirt floors, shimmering in the firelight from a hearth.

Sineya appears only once, nods regally and then walks away, into the dunes, with a finality that makes Buffy shiver. 

In the dirt at her feet, she finds a set of scales, half buried in the sand. When she tries to pull it out, it’s too heavy to even budge. 

+

Originals. 

That’s the word that keeps coming up, again and again. 

Originals. 

_What the hell are they?_

Willow calls ten minutes after the message is sent, sounding harried. 

“Why do you need to know about the originals, Buffy?”

Buffy, lying spread-eagle on her hotel bed, sighs. “Because it seems important?”

There’s a beat of silence, before Willow echoes the sigh. “They’re the ancients of another breed of vampire, created about a thousand years ago. A witch supposedly created a spell that turned her children immortal, so they would never die. But magic keeps balance, so for everything it gave them, it took. They live forever, but as monsters. They’re… there’s stories about them razing entire villages to the ground. They’re the worst of the worst. Actual fairy tale monsters. One of them is supposedly half vampire, half werewolf.”

That sounds familiar. 

“How many of them are there?” 

Sheets, then the clacking of a keyboard. “There are… five? Maybe six. We only know of a few for certain. Klaus, Rebekah, and Elijah. They… Buffy, if they’re in New Orleans, you need backup. They’re bad. Like, Angelus bad. Worse. Except there is literally nothing in this world that can kill them.”

Buffy hums. “I got that, thanks,” she tells her old friend. “But everything’s fine. Can you do some more research? Maybe get me a few more names? I’ll keep digging.”

They don’t bother with small talk. 

+

She’s late for their date, texts Elijah wait for her inside the little gallery he wanted to show her. It looks like rain and, she teases, she’s only looking out for his threads. 

Half an hour later she finds him staring at a large canvass of abstract red and black. It looks like a thunderstorm, like blood and mourning and he stands in front of it, hands folded at the small of his back, head cocked the slightest bit to one side. 

Like he can read novels in a few splashes of color. 

She comes to a halt next to him, rests her head on his shoulder and joins him in staring. 

“Angry,” she observes, after a minute.

He laughs quietly. “My brother painted it.”

“I hear he’s the angry type,” she agrees. He stiffens. 

With one hand, she reaches around, threads her fingers with his, drawing his arm forward so they can both look at their joined hands. “Was any of it real?” 

She should try to kill him, probably, fight him, break a few bones, but Willow says it’d be futile anyway. A true immortal. An original vampire. 

And even if he lied, even if the eyes she always felt on her were his, she was _happy_. For a few weeks, she was happy. 

It’d been so long. 

He twists their hands around, weaving them tighter, and squeezes. 

+

They walk back to the French Quarter and Buffy still isn’t quite sure if there is an explanation or a firing squad coming, but she follows anyway for reasons she can’t articulate. 

Perhaps it’s because he calls her beautiful, or because, when he looks at her, she sees only warmth in his dark eyes. 

There are two men and a woman sitting in the courtyard of a building as old as the city. “Klaus, Hayley, Marcel,” Elijah greets, tucking Buffy’s arm into his elbow. “Meet Buffy.”

Marcel keeps scowling – dethroned king – Hayley frowns and Klaus laughs, long and loud, Spike-levels of madness in his blue eyes. “You bring _her_ ,” he finally snaps, “around my unborn child, brother?”

Elijah rolls his eyes. “Do you really think I would have brought her, if I thought her a danger, brother?”

And Buffy decides to ignore them both, pulling her arm free and asking, “Do you know what it is, already? Boy or girl? How far along are you? And how’s the feet? My mom always said the worst part about being pregnant with my sister was that she grew two shoe-sizes. No kidding.”

It’s babble, happy babble, the babble of a happy girl. Buffy is happy, was happy. Here, in this city that was supposed to slowly suck the life out of her, but didn’t, and for once, being happy babbly seems like something she’s allowed to be, so she disarms them all and ends up standing in front of the pregnant girl with her hands in the air, gesturing _large feet_. 

Klaus growls. 

+

“You’re special,” Elijah says, hours later, tracing patterns on her bare skin. She’s overdue for a check-in with Willow, days late for a written report. 

Outside his bedroom, the war between witches, vampires and werewolves rages on. 

“Special little snowflake,” she agrees, mockingly. 

He pinches her side. “Quite,” he tells her, dead serious. “This city is built on the back of the ancestors, who are magic, and magic… magic likes you quite a lot, Buffy, dear.”

She rolls onto her side, facing him. “Explain.”

“There is a prophecy. Quite wordy and given in a long-dead language, transcribed into another, equally dead one. But the gist of it…,” he wraps a curl of her hair around his finger.

“My siblings and I, we were abominations, so magic balanced us. We live forever, at the price of blood. But that was a thousand years ago. Have you ever seen what happens to abandoned buildings in the forest?”

She frowns. “They get overgrown.”

“Exactly. What nature cannot remove, it assimilates. And magic is, at its basics, nature. We have been assimilated into the web of magic in this plane. But while we are balanced in ourselves, we have no outside counterparts.”

Buffy buries her face in a pillow. “I think I know where this is going,” she mutters, mouth full of cotton, thinking of buried scales and red skies.

“Quite,” he agrees. “We are a special breed of vampire, an eternal breed, and we need an equally special, equally eternal counterpart.”

She raises a hand without looking up. “Not eternal.”

He rolls into her, arm around her waist and breathes into her neck. “But Buffy,” he whispers, “this city is built on magic.”

She thinks it through. The minis and their lost powers, her and that constant feeling of buzzing contentment, that feeling you get after a slightly too-big meal. Breaking necks with a single punch and never getting tired anymore. 

She thinks that any other slayer that sets foot in this city, will probably end up like the other seven, thinks that the effects might spread, over time, until she’s got enough energy to freaking glow, and the other slayers might all just be girls again. 

She doesn’t know how she knows, but she’s sure that’s exactly what is going to happen. The Original Slayer. 

How tacky.

“Is that why you came for me in that bar?” she wonders.

“I followed you into that bar because of it,” he admits. “I spoke with you because of yourself.”

“What happens if I leave town?” she asks, changing the subject abruptly. 

He chuckles. “Why, nothing. Your power is yours. The deed is done. But why would you leave?” he wants to know, suddenly rolling them both until she ends up straddling him, her hands on either side of his head. “When your prey is right here?”

She laughs. “Balance, huh?”

“Balance,” he agrees.

+

“-not here right now, but if you leave me a message, I’ll call back super soon, promise. You know the drill.”

 _Beep_. 

“Hey, Wills, it’s Buffy. Listen, that thing in New Orleans? It’s not something we can do a lot about. Just… make the city a no-go zone for any slayers, alright? I’ll stick around, look after the place, okay. I’ll call you soon. I gotta go now. Bye!”

_Beep._

+


End file.
